It’s mid May and you notice that the stinging nettles are popping out of the ground and ready for harvest. The same week you remember hearing the Spring Peepers calling. You now have an alarm for when to go and harvest nettles.

With each New Year we talk about renewal, clean slates, and (hopefully positive) changes. When I look out the window or go outside and think about our relationship with the environment around us, those concepts are exactly what come to mind. With every fresh snowfall, the landscape is transformed into a pure beginning; tracks to be made, color to be added. The drab and dead is washed away with melting snow and the springtime of rebirth is upon us.

I often talk about sit spots and as Jon Young puts it, "one place is the best teacher” in terms of understanding and building a relationship with the environment around you. This time of year is great to either start that process or to add another aspect to it with a Nature Chronicle. By recording observations throughout the year you’ll get a big picture of how things change and relate in nature. This can be done at the rate and in the medium or your choosing. Your Nature Chronicle can be done daily, weekly, monthly, or at random. It can be in a notebook, on your iPad, or in a blog. There are many benefits to maintaining records and journals but your Nature Chronicle can be so much more. You will start to see subtle cycles and relationships in nature that go unnoticed by most. You notice that in one area of town the milkweed still has mostly seed pods yet on another road the pods are all open and sending their seeds to the wind (dispersing seeds via wind=anemochory). You just identified a micro-climate. If you are a forager you just extended the harvest season for plants in those differing micro-climates. These are just a couple benefits of a Nature Chronicle, not to mention the plethora of documented health benefits gleaned from time spent outside and nature connection. Much of John Muir’s knowledge and experience in nature came from a “nature journal” as explained in this article from the Sierra Club. Many of us have attempted or maintain a journal/diary and many of us have failed at regularly updating it. I know I have. Therefore, here are some tips to help you keep at it and get the most out of your Nature Chronicle”

Set goals: Have a set day or time in which you record observations. Whether it’s every morning after a morning stroll, each week on Sunday, or after every sit spot. A regular time that you can get into a habit with is key.

Use in hand with a sit spot:Sit spots can truly be something special when done frequently. Adding your Nature Chronicle to record your observations will greatly increase the benefits of your sit spot.

Open it up to others: Make it public and available for others to record their observations. The idea is to get a big picture of the changes occurring through the year.

Open it up to multiple locations: Using a sit spot that is one place is a great model for building your relationship and understanding of your natural world. However it is also useful to record observations throughout the year in multiple locations. Maybe you noticed a plant blooming while driving to work or that the ice had melted on the lake on your run. Recording whatever you see and wherever you see it.

Personalize it: Give your chronicle a name that means something to you or your family or relating to the land that it records. Record observations from a piece of land that means something to you. Your own land, a piece of land that speaks to you or has historical value.

Keep it objective: Objective records will reveal the most about the ecology of the environment. Even if you observe a plant or critter that you don’t know the name of, you can record what it looked like, how it acted, etc.

Let it slip into subjectivity: Of course add stories, your feelings, etc. Sometimes we don’t see something but we feel it. Or our intuition often tells us there is something there or something happening. Add it in there. Your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings are a very important part of building your knowledge of and relationship with the environment around you.

Structure it: Have a place to record specific flora and fauna data and observations. Record locations, dates, times, and weather. Utilizing a template will help you go back and find past observation which will greatly increase your ability to make connections and see the subtleties of nature. Click here to download the template.

For maximum benefit, it is most important to enter your observations often as possible. So just like the sit spot, whatever you can do to facilitate this key. Make it fun, make it accessible, be safe and enjoy watching nature’s secrets open up to you throughout this next year. *side note: the links I used in this article to the benefits of outside time/nature connection and keeping a journal are just the tip of the iceberg. To learn more, do a simple internet search (ironic right?)...or go to your local library and the info is plentiful.